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Hello and welcome to Dear grief Guide.
A podcast where each week I answer one anonymous letter
from a listener feeling lost, stuck, heartbroken,
or overwhelmed in the midst of grief.
My name is Shelby Fercitya.
I'm a grief coach and author,
and I'm here to help you create a life you love
from the life lost forced you to live.
Let's get to today's letter.
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Dear grief guide,
I'm struggling with overwhelming anxiety
and paranoia since losing my best friend
in a tragic car accident.
The fear of losing other loved ones suddenly or otherwise
has consumed me to the point
where it's affecting my daily life.
Right now I'm sitting in a library,
anxiously awaiting my partner's return
from a routine colonoscopy.
He has Crohn's disease,
so this procedure is a regular part of his healthcare routine.
However, my mind is flooded with worst case scenarios,
fearing that the doctors will find something serious
like colon cancer and that he'll be taken from me.
This irrational fear has a near constant hold
on my mind and body, making it hard to breathe
or focus on anything else.
I don't think I felt joy or peace
since before my best friend died,
and every time my partner leaves the house,
my mind races with terrifying possibilities.
I'm paralyzed by the thought that he might not come back.
I haven't shared these fears with him
because I don't wanna add to his worries,
but keeping them bottled up only intensifies my anxiety.
I feel trapped in a cycle of fear and panic,
unable to break free from the grip
of these persistent thoughts.
I am so, so afraid of experiencing future losses.
I am desperately seeking guidance on how to cope
and regain a sense of control or even peace again.
I know I can't control the future
and I certainly can't control when or how
the people around me die, but I worry about it all the time.
Any supporter advice you can offer
would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely, anxiety ridden to death.
Okay, anxiety.
The first thing I have to tell you
is that I am not a mental health professional.
I am but a mere grief coach,
so please take everything I am about to say
with all the grains of salt that you have available to you.
First, I need to validate for you
that what you are experiencing is very normal and very natural.
Your brain is ruminating on who's gonna die next,
who's gonna die next, who's gonna die next,
who's gonna die next, it's like world's worst record player
because we are wired to protect ourselves from future pain,
from future losses.
Your brain is telling you the story
that you might genuinely die
if you experience the shock or intensity
of more heartache, whatever that looks like.
Your body and your mind are doing what they think are best
to protect you in a world where loss has taught you
very distressingly, very upsettingly, if that's a word,
that anything can happen at any time.
And I do not want to downplay the weight
and the fear that that induces,
especially with sudden or traumatic losses,
like a tragic accident.
I hear you, this is real, you are not crazy.
That these are all things I need to say of course,
this is how your brain is responding to your best friend's death.
The second thing I need to tell you is if you can access
resources of any kind,
these are the ones that I've got in my pocket
to offer you today.
First, if you can tell somebody other than me
about what you're feeling.
It doesn't have to be your boyfriend,
but a grief group, a therapist, a spiritual director,
a death doula, these are all people who in different facets
are trained in something called,
and you may not have heard this term before,
mortality anxiety or anxiety about the fact that you will die,
he will die, I will die, we will all die,
one of these days, and the side effects that come with
this anxiety hindering your daily life.
I always want to acknowledge that therapy works,
but it doesn't necessarily work for everybody,
which is why I want to lay out this buffet of other options,
grief groups, spiritual directors,
if you are part of a religious or spiritual community,
death doula, these are people who are trained
in marvelous ways to walk you through,
and to process with you and to help your brain process,
what it means to be afraid of the next loss in your life.
They can all in their own ways help you focus
on what you can control, which you mention in your letter,
what's within your power, and also find meaningful,
powerful, helpful ways to release what you can't.
And what I also want to say about this is,
oh my goodness, is this a practice.
I remember so vividly after my mother's death,
I was 21 when she died.
We got about a week's notice that she wasn't going to make it,
she died in a week, and for me, that was sudden and tragic.
I know a lot of people refer to sudden and tragic
as they were here one minute and gone the next,
things like car accidents, suicide,
other forms of tragedy natural disasters.
And also the more I reflect on the grief,
I feel on the loss I experienced,
I have begun to label my mother's death as sudden,
because I did not have time to process the fact
that she was going to die in the time
that we had with her before her death.
So that's a soft segue to what I'm saying is,
I was 21 when she died.
Her death was extraordinarily sudden.
It was my first and my worst loss that I have ever faced
and will remain so, I think forever.
And I remember dating people,
'cause I was in my early 20s,
I was not married at the time that she died,
dating people and for about,
I'd say like two to five years.
After her death, when I would meet somebody for a first date,
one of the first thoughts that would appear in my mind
is, huh, I wonder if we get together for a long time,
maybe we'll even get married,
I wonder when they're gonna die and how they're gonna die
and which one of us is going first.
Like the thought of every time I met a new person,
when are you going to die, when are you going to leave me?
When is it going to repeat itself?
The pain of this, when will I see that pain and meet that pain again?
I remember that being very vivid,
very much a part of my regular programming.
My regularly scheduled programming
on the TV station in my brain was,
who's gonna die next and when?
I remember being terrified that my father was going to die.
After my mother's death, I realized people could die.
I knew it logically, but I had just experienced it,
physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally,
all of the above.
So I was terrified that he was going to die.
I have had seasons where I've been very afraid
that my sister was going to die.
My friends are going to die
and I did have my best friend die recently.
So what I want to validate is this is very normal
and there are still thoughts of this
that pop up in my brain now and then,
especially in great seasons of stress or illness
or times when someone is hurting
that I can only help so far.
But I think the difference between the two of us
is that there is space in my brain
for a lot of other things right now too.
And I think that's what you're going for.
I don't know that I can guarantee you
that you will never have these thoughts again.
I don't think that grief works like that.
I think that almost everybody I've ever spoken to
who's grieving has mentioned or made mention
of the fact that yeah, I kind of wonder now
when people around me are going to die.
It's a part of my life.
I know it can happen because it happened once
or it happened twice or it happened five times.
So I know for sure it can happen again.
I just don't know when.
But the weight of it being a constant and an unending
kind of a furlough, a better phrasing like a bully,
something that is tormenting you,
that is terrifying you, that is holding you hostage.
That is what I want you to be able to process
in a safe place with people who know what it's like
to have mortality anxiety.
So I hope you'll reach out for or search
for those resources in your area or even online
because so many grief support things happen online these days.
And then the last resource I want to offer you is a book
if you're able to read right now or even listen
to an audio book I love listening to things
when I'm grieving like podcasts
because reading words sometimes is simply too hard
for my brain.
There's a wonderful book by Claire Ben Wellesmith
called "Anxiety," the missing stage of grief.
And it is a primer on anxiety's role
and all the ways that it shows up in grief,
both in mortality anxiety, being anxious about your death
or the deaths of other people around you,
experiencing future losses.
But also how anxiety shows up in other ways
because it does, it kind of,
it's kind of like one of those play-doh extruders
and you press down too hard, you experience some great loss
and it causes a lot of pressure.
And then anxiety just comes out left, right, and sideways.
In all these ways, sometimes that you can anticipate
and sometimes that you can't.
So this is a wonderful book for reckoning
with the weight of anxiety and anxiety being a factor
in your grief.
I truly hope that all of these things are helpful.
I am sending you so much love and so much breath
and ease.
I know breath is so hard when you have anxiety.
And I hope that you can find a way
and I trust that you can for anxiety to be
much more of a companion, a member of your household,
than the force that is holding you in your life hostage right now
because what a hell that is to live in.
There is no joy there, there is no peace there,
there is no contentedness, there's not even room for boredom.
It is just relentless circling and ruminating
and wondering and worrying.
And that's a really hard life to live.
So I see you, I acknowledge everything
that you're going through right now
and I am hoping that soon I will hear back from you
with a different signature,
perhaps instead of anxiety ridden to death,
maybe making peace with anxiety
or finding a place for anxiety.
I hope you'll write back.
Good luck.
(soft music)
That's all for this episode of Dear Grave Guide.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
If you're feeling lost, stuck, heartbroken
or overwhelmed in the midst of your own grief,
check out my free workshop, Grow Through Grave,
three ways to stop feeling stuck
and start moving forward.
I'll give you three easy actionable tools
for navigating life after loss
and show you how you can create peace, stability
and compassion right there
in the middle of grief's confusion and uncertainty.
You can find the workshop link in the show notes.
If this podcast helped you feel a little less alone
in your grief, please subscribe
and leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify
or wherever you're listening
and be sure to share Dear Grave Guide with a friend
because you never know what someone you love is going through.
You can submit your anonymous letter for the show
and find additional grief support at shellbeforsitia.com.
Music for Dear Grave Guide is performed by Eddie Goldstein,
editing by Ruth Spence of Celebio.
Until next time, I see you.
I am so proud of you and the work that you're doing in the world
and I love you because even through grief, we are growing.
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